The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Alfred McKenzie Award Acceptance Speech

On June 13, 2006, LCCR was honored by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, receiving the Alfred McKenzie Award for our work in fair housing, public accommodations, public education, immigrant and refugee rights, disability rights, and equal employment opportunity. LCCR President and CEO Wade Henderson accepted the award on behalf of LCCR.

Good afternoon. I'm Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation's oldest, largest and most diverse coalition of civil rights, human rights, and social justice organizations.

It's an honor to accept the Alfred McKenzie Award on behalf of the Leadership Conference. Alfred McKenzie distinguished himself with his courageous service to this country. He volunteered for service in World War II and became a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. When he came home, he went back to work in the Government Printing Office, where African Americans were kept in low-level jobs without the chance to move up.

Luckily, Mr. McKenzie had more fight in him, and for decades he struggled for equality for African American federal government employees. Eventually, with the help of the Washington Lawyers' Committee and Hogan & Hartson, he became the lead plaintiff in a landmark class action suit that changed federal personnel policies for workers everywhere.

The case is a great example of why the Washington Lawyers' Committee is so important to the country. Washington is not Las Vegas. What happens in Washington, DC does not stay in Washington, DC.

That's why the Leadership Conference looks for opportunities to work with the Lawyers' Committee. We're national civil rights advocates and we represent nearly 200 national organizations. Time and again, we've seen that local DC issues have national implications, and I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about two of them.

We're working together now on DC voting rights and making real progress, as evidenced by the overwhelming 29-to-4 bipartisan committee vote last month to give us a voting member in the House of Representatives. Like the Lawyers' Committee itself, the hearing on DC Vote was a great example of the power of a broad-based partnership between non-profit advocates and private law firms, as I found myself testifying next to Ken Starr and we were agreeing on all things constitutional and practical.

We're also working together on public education, where national issues have always been entwined with the District's local educational problems. Fifty-two years ago, when the Brown v. Board of Education cases were decided, the John Phillip Sousa High School in Southeast was one of the segregated white schools ruled unconstitutional.

The federal Constitution doesn't include a right to public education. It wasn't left out of the Constitution because the framers didn't think that public education was absolutely crucial to a democratic society. It was left out because they intended states to guarantee the right. The federal government used to require that the right to public education be included in state constitutions. In fact, federal land grants going back to before the adoption of the U.S. Constitution often included the requirement that some of the land be used for public education.

Forty-eight of fifty state constitutions contain a right to public education. But none of the laws establishing the District included a right to education. So now, that federal failure is a local issue and the Leadership Conference has joined the Lawyers' Committee and Parents United to call for an amendment to the DC Charter -- our equivalent of a state constitution -- to guarantee a right to a free, HIGH QUALITY public education for every child. Let me emphasize that: a HIGH QUALITY public education.

The language in the other state constitutions varies, and only three use the specific words "high quality." So, is it a poor choice of words for the District? Well, I suppose that depends on what our goals are. Do we want to jump from the back of the line all the way up to 48th place? Is that all we can aspire to? Or, do we want to lead?

Some, including two or three members of the City Council, seem to think that guaranteeing a right to a high quality education is more trouble than it's worth. They're arguing that it could subject the District to lawsuits that would somehow put the schools under the thumb of a court. Apparently, some would like to water down the charter amendment to either strip out the words "high quality" or create the right with one sentence and take it away with the next, by saying the right couldn't be enforced in court.

Leaving aside how constricted a view that is of how much trouble a high quality education is worth, it's still a bad argument. At one time or another, more than 40 states have been sued over their failure to provide public education as required by their state constitutions. Over 40, not just Virginia, Florida, and Illinois, which are the ones that include the words "high quality."

And, in those three states, the courts haven't taken over the school system or tried to impose their own standards. They've said that it isn't a court's place to define what "high quality" means. In those states, and in all of the others, the vast majority of the suits are over disparities between school districts, which would not be an issue in DC, where we only have one school district.

In a year where it has spent so much time, energy, and money to ensure that we have a high quality baseball stadium, does the Council really want to tell our children that they have the right to a public education, just not a high quality one?

As for restricting any enforcement of the right, everybody in this room should know what that means. Without a remedy, there is no right. What would have happened if the Equal Protection Clause couldn't be enforced by private citizens in the courts? For starters, Brown v. Board of Education certainly wouldn't have outlawed school segregation.

In this city, where so many of our rights are already restricted, where our citizens have served and died in every war without being represented in Congress when it voted on whether we should go to war or on how much we spend on body armor to protect them, where we've been prohibited from even counting the ballots on one public referendum, should we beat Congress to the punch and start restricting our own fundamental rights? That's not the City Council's job.

Every parent in this room, every lawyer in this room, every advocate and every activist in this room needs to get involved. We need to ensure that we have the full public debate that a Charter amendment and public referendum will bring. It's how we build a complete, unqualified, city-wide commitment to giving all of our children a HIGH QUALITY public education.

The Councilmembers in this room need to lead this fight, not shy away from it. That's the City Council's job. When the Council meets next week, make sure it doesn't put off this amendment again, and make sure it doesn't gut it with any changes that will weaken or deny the right to a free, HIGH QUALITY public education.

If we commit to and achieve true education reform here in DC, with our complicated, enmeshed political system, then it can be done in any city. And what happens in Washington, DC will not stay in Washington, DC.

Once again, I'm honored by this award, I thank you very much and look forward to continuing our work together.